The singer Régine Crespin said I could go for a lesson at her house, on Rue Pigalle, with its guarded iron gates, just next to the Moulin Rouge, writes Amu Komsi
As a singing student, there was a point when I needed to get outside Finland for new inspiration. I received a scholarship to be resident at the Cité des Arts in Paris, so I approached a famous singer, Régine Crespin, who said I could go for a lesson at her house. Address: Rue Pigalle, a small secluded street, with iron gates guarded by a gatekeeper, just next to the Moulin Rouge, in a rather exotic part of Paris.
There she was, in her grand plush townhouse, and she gave me a very reassuring, intelligent lesson, saying how I needed much more training and experience but that my "vocal apparatus" was in good shape.
Mrs Crespin then sent me on to one of her assistants, Ms Dupleix, who made me realise many important things in vocal technique, not least how to sing a proper trill - a true revelation!
I revisited Mrs Crespin several times subsequently and always got an impression of a great artist, very serious and hard-working, and a quietly charismatic person. She gave me great inspiration.
The recording of Ravel's Sheherazade that Crespin did at the peak of her singing career is the best one I know of this piece. Her phrasing is the softest possible, to the point of giving a feeling of floating and a wonderfully dreamy character.
There is an anecdote that Madame Crespin tells in her autobiography. At a certain point in the piece, she had really worked hard to give an ethereal character to a certain word.
In the session, the conductor, Ernest Ansermet, kept asking her and the orchestra to play that very passage over and over again, without saying what he thought was wrong. It finally appeared that Ansermet, who was old at the time, always thought she had run out of breath on that one note.
The Finnish soprano Anu Komsi performs Debussy and Mahler with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra at the National Concert Hall, in Dublin, on Thursday; bookings at 01-4170000
